In Conversation with David Goa

I title this series of conversations with young people The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. I met each person in this series while teaching at Newman Theological College in Edmonton from 2020, during the pandemic, through the Fall of 2023. Newman had just introduced a new degree and moved its curriculum into a great books and Socratic dialogue model.

I title this series of conversations with young people The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. I met each person in this series while teaching at Newman Theological College in Edmonton from 2020, during the pandemic, through the Fall of 2023. Newman had just introduced a new degree and moved its curriculum into a great books and Socratic dialogue model.

I title this series of conversations with young people The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. I met each person in this series while teaching at Newman Theological College in Edmonton from 2020, during the pandemic, through the Fall of 2023. Newman had just introduced a new degree and moved its curriculum into a great books and Socratic dialogue model.

I sat down with Archbishop Lazar last Fall to talk about the Theotokos, Joy of Canada icon that graces the Monastery of All Saints of North America’s Church. How did he come to commission this icon for the monastery? What motivated his doing so and his writing of the Akathist Hymn associated with the icon and establish the monastery feast day at the end of July each year anchored by a processio...

I am pleased to be joined by Pastor Todd Wiebe for this on-going series of conversations on the Ekklesia. I met Todd some years ago and have had the pleasure of working together with him on various occasions. His pastoral work has been particular, serving a Brethren Church for many years, a Presbyterian Church for a season and, in the last few years the CapChurch and North Lonsdale United Chur...

I am pleased to be joined by Pastor Eden Jersak for this on-going series of conversations on the Ekklesia. I am privileged to call Eden, and her husband Brad, friends and have spent many rich hours in conversation with them in their home in Abbotsford. Eden’s understanding of the church as a place of welcome, as a place where you can always add another leaf to the table of fellowship is striking.

I am pleased to be joined by Pastor Donald Sjoberg for this on-going series of conversations on the Ekklesia. Bishop Sjoberg was born in 1930 on a farm near Clanwilliam, Manitoba. His early life was shaped by the Swedish immigrant community and Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Erickson, Manitoba. He studied at Luther College in Regina and at the University of Saskatoon where he was a part of the ...

This is my third conversation with Calum McCracken. We continue exploring the place of religion in shaping political movements and focus on the rise of Christian Reconstructionism and its current shape, Christian Nationalism.

This is my second conversation with Calum McCracken. We continue exploring the place of religion and public policy in the Civil Rights Movement Calum’s undergraduate studies focused on political philosophy. He is now off to graduate school and will be working on issues of human rights on the international stage.

One of the pleasures of my teaching and curatorial work, in Universities and Museums, has been welcoming young budding scholars to the table. Our research and thinking together has always been fruitful. Today’s conversation kicks off a series of conversations with young scholars on themes I have been privileged to work on with each of them In the last number of months Calum McCracken has joine...

I am pleased to be joined by Professor Richard Topping for this on-going series of conversations on the Ekklesia. He is President of the Vancouver School of Theology, a federated faculty bringing together students and professors from a variety of churches. He has worked to ground theological education in the gift of Christian scripture, its revelation and call to faithfulness. He sees, clearer ...

Mikel is the only person I have known who has met face to face with Ian Paisley, the militant Protestant leader central to the fractured society of Northern Ireland in the 1960s and following. We explore the Baptist idea of doctrinal purity, the “attractional” model of evangelical worship centered on one form or another of spectacle. What attracts people to this model and what does it nurture i...

I have had the pleasure over the last decade or so of thinking with Ray Sawatsky about religion and culture. I am delighted to talk with him in this series of conversations on the Ekklesia. He is an astute commenter on the entanglement between a number of political interests and evangelical church leaders. How have these entanglements shaped his generation’s growing unease and distance from the...

Pastor Ingrid grew up in post-war Germany and navigated the trauma of the war’s shadow. She discusses the habit of taking refuge in church doctrine as a way of avoiding the responsibility for what unfolded in Germany; the church as a gathering of family and friends, of the like-minded, while teaching engagement with strangers; a church “turned inwards”.

Scholars and intellectuals, like artists, often if not always stand on the shoulders of others, those women and men, ancient and modern, who have gone before. At times, in conversation, the lineage surfaces and our debt to them is vivid, our gratitude palpable. So, it is for Jason West. As President, vice-Chancellor and Professor at Newman Theological College, Edmonton, he and his colleagues ha...

Last fall I had the pleasure of teaching a course on Christianity and other religions at the invitation of Ryan Topping, Academic Dean and vice-President of Newman Theological College in Edmonton. In our initial conversation he told me of an initiative at Newman to establish a BA in Catholic Studies using the great books that have been foundational to the Christian culture of the West. In my fo...

Since November 11th, 1931, Canadians have paused to remember those men and women who have served in our various armed forces. Shortly after attending this years’ service of memory in Ottawa I sat down with Lorraine Smith-MacDonald to think about her work listening to soldiers who have recently served in Canada’s forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere. How has she come to prepare for this work and ...

Steve Bynum has been the senior producer for Worldviews, a global affairs program on Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ. We met at a monastery a number of years ago and our conversations have explored the challenges to democracy, culture, and communities given both the political leadership and the habits of mind in both Canada and the United States of America. In this podcast we explore questions of ra...

Last September I was invited to a conference of the International Council for Middle East Studies titles, “Faith, Community, and Culture”, held at the University of British Columbia in Kelowna. My previous podcasts with Norton Mezvinsky and Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro were recorded on that occasion. This podcast with Professor Emilio Ferrin from the University of Seville is the third of my conversatio...

David Jennings: lawyer, business man, theological thinker, philanthropist, social critic and cultural entrepreneur, superb board member for so many church and arts organizations, son of the Presbyterian Church, friend and interlocutor. Our wide-ranging conversation touches areas largely foreign to me and perhaps to some of you. He invites us to think again about matters too easily dismissed by ...

Historians have argued that Christian Zionism migrated into Jewish, largely secular Jewish circles, and seeded forms of Zionism that are foundational to the Israeli state. One of the foremost Jewish scholars of this matter is Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro. He forcefully argues that Zionism has moved Jewish identity away from the Covenant and Commandments, which called the Jewish people, as the scripture...

David Brooks, one of America’s fine public intellectuals in his recent book The Second Mountain, quotes C.S. Lewis. I remember reading Lewis’ comment years ago and was delighted to have it brought to mind. “The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.” In prepari...

Norton Mezvinsky, historian and activist, is currently writing a book titled, “Is A Jewish State a Good Idea?” Is it a good idea in the Middle East? This book culminates Professor Mezvinsky’s close to seven decades of thinking about the state of Israel, the Palestinian community, the role of Jewish fundamentalism and Christian Zionism and the relationship of Israel to the United States of America.

Welcome to our conversation on spiritual formation, and a vocation in service to “a more Christ-like God.”

My friend Greg Pennoyer who sits on the board of Prison Fellowship International (PFI) introduced me to Andrew Corley who became the President and CEO of PFI a year ago. I welcomed the opportunity to meet for several reasons. First, is the work in prisons through the Ephesus project colleagues and I have engaged over the last few years. Second, is Andy’s formation and service through the Salvat...

I welcome you to my conversation with Professor Uluc in which he speaks forthrightly about the institutional changes brought about recently in Turkey, particular those in religious education. It is a fluid situation and one I think we need to understand.

I welcome you to our conversation on the meaning of icon and of place; on what is often described as the impurities in the soil, which Symeon sees as its distinctive personality, and, on the act of translating the Orthodox tradition through the soil of Canada.

I welcome you to our conversation on Norway, Islam, and issues of religion and public life.

I welcome you to our conversation on church and state and the challenges to the Orthodox churches posed by nationalism, fundamentalism and anti- Semitism in the post-Soviet period.

I welcome you to our conversation on President Trump, the evangelicals and what is unfolding in American political culture.